Automotive/Transportation ForumAutomotive/Transportation Forum

Automotive/Transportation ForumAutomotive/Transportation Forum

The electronics industry speaks about keeping pace with the shifting automotive market

CONDUCTED AND MODERATED BY RALPH RAIOLA

For electronic component manufacturers, the ability to play in the transportation market is, ultimately, a good thing. But the automotive electronics environment is a highly pressurized one, rife with cost, reliability, and technological issues for which the manufacturer is always held accountable. We recently spoke with representatives from eight suppliers to the vehicle industry to figure out just where the rubber meets the road.

Electronic Products: How are the components you manufacture affected by automotive network and communications standards like CAN, LIN, MOST, JasPar, etc.? And what types of products are you producing to enable those standards to become realized?

Peter Riendeau (VP Marketing, Melexis): Most of our products are sensors or sensor ICs and we see the networking aspect being driven down to the IC level with the network interface actually on the same silicon as the sensing function. So we’re busy implementing LIN, for instance, directly into Hall effect sensors and into electronic sensors.

So we certainly see the network and communication standards as a very important aspect and a very important trend. But this is driving a cost adder into the IC in order to give the silicon area that allows the interface to the different bus communication standards. We see some standalone sensors and standalone actuator devices or actuator ICs still viable because of the cost.

Electronic Products: Especially in the automotive arena, where things are pretty tight?

Peter Riendeau: Incredibly tight. And I think that’s why the CAN standard that Bosch pioneered has still been the most pervasive so far, but it’s also the thing that’s been around for the longest. And I think the thing that has limited CAN in particular has been the cost. But now, we’re seeing some of these other bus standards like LIN in particular which is much less expensive to implement being adopted for in particular lots of general sensor and non-real-time functions.

Martin Mason (Director of Silicon Product Marketing, Actel): I echo the sentiments there. I think a lot of what is driving these interface standards is, in fact, cost.

I saw a very interesting application recently—a backup camera sensor where, instead of digitizing the data and sending it high-speed to an LVDS link inside the car, they had actually just gone back to using plain old analog TV data to send it to the glass in the front dash. That was because the wiring was cheaper to do it that way than to use a high performance digital cabling system.

And so, I think cost is still a very important driver for many applications out there. And I kind of agree with the sentiment that LIN is being used in a lot of the body electronics because it’s very low cost. I think we see some of these other standards increasingly turning off and being requestes as IP for the FPGA products. But they can also end up being a relatively expensive implementation, particularly when you look at things like FlexRay and MOST and so you start seeing the emergence of ASFP chips dealing with some of those interface standards.

Dirk Keck (VP of Sales and Marketing, Silicon Microstructures): We see in the recent past or even for a little bit longer a very high and rising demand for digital communications, even if you’re looking at relatively simple pressure-sensor elements. And you can basically react to this demand in two different ways.

The first way is having—as the colleague from Melexis already mentioned—the intelligence incorporated directly onto the sensor die which is, in terms of MEMS sensors, a solution that is taking us to a cointegrated part. There is another way to react to this demand and this is to create a system in a package. That means combining a relatively conventional sensor element with local intelligence based on the silicon IC into a suitable package that has preconditions to bring the environment towards the sensor. It is very difficult to distinguish whether there is a preference for one or the other solution. But as cost is the key driver here, and I agree with the colleagues here very much, it has to be very, very carefully considered which of the solutions is the more cost-efficient one.

Alan Manara (Director of New Business Development, BI Technologies): We do see an increase in customer requests to use these types of interfaces and different types of buses. However, once we go through the costing and pricing exercises, most customers (95% or more), immediately resort to a different set up which avoids using CAN or LIN, especially in the mid- to low-range car systems that are more cost-sensitive than higher range vehicles.

The interest is there because they’ve seen systems work those buses. But when they see how much they cost, they say “Forget it, we’re going to stay with a simple analog output, or a simple PWM output”. As the economies of the scale start acting on companies, like the silicon providers, and new technologies come in, the prices for these solutions will get to a point where it would make a lot sense for general adoption of digital interfacing and technology.

This is especially true when the number of systems within the vehicle increases and data exchange becomes a must. In other words, the systems start to require data from other systems and running a common bus would be more cost effective instead of having dedicated nodes to generate the required data.

Mike Wills (Automotive Business Development Mgr., Optek Technology): I have to agree with a lot of what Alan said. From the fully packaged sensor side, nearly all the inquiries we get include some request for either CAN and LIN bus systems. But at the end of the day, when they go to the costing exercises, especially for the body-control-type sensors, they almost always go back to an analog or a PWM type of an output.

And it’s driven very much by cost. In some of the more safety-critical applications I have seen a little bit more of a push to go to something like the LIN bus systems. We’ve also looked at some applications that have been FlexRay- and MOST- oriented, and what I’ve seen is more of a tendency to move toward FlexRay as the backbone because the fiber-optics required present cost issues and performance issues for the vehicle and has not been as simple as everybody would have initially imagined. High-speed systems seem to have been getting a push in high-end vehicles in Europe for entertainment systems, but strictly for that.

Paul Leonard (VP, Functional Power, Automotive, Fairchild Semiconductor): The power devices we sell today, which are medium and high power, have no communications on them. We have products with status flags that provide feedback to the controller for diagnostic capability.

Jim Gillberg (Director of Automotive Applications and Market Development Activity, Fairchild Semiconductor): As Paul said, most of our products today don’t have any communications in them. But the network itself—the fact there is a network there—is driving the need for more diagnostics, more sensing, and there’s more data being shared within the car. That actually goes down to the power devices, where you’re going to have more current-sensing and communicating information of how much current is in a given load or if there’s a fault of some kind.

The other thing is there’s a very large disparity in the types of technology, and this matches what Dirk said, in that we’re doing more and more mixed technology within a package. For example, for CAN or a product of that nature, you need a high-density CMOS device. But the physical layer that you need in that system is going to have to typically be much more robust and rugged to protect it, with all the transients and everything that can happen on that wire.

And quite often, it’s much more cost-effective to handle that integration in packaging. And we’re doing those kinds of things with Trench power devices or IGBTs with mixed-signal ASICs or digital devices. As some of these communication standards are required—even down lower in the system—most likely it will be accomplished through some type of packaging approach.

Ron Demcko (Applications Engineer, AVX): What we’re seeing is increased usage of the network and communications standards and protocols, and we’re enjoying that popularity. We are addressing all of the standards by creating series of standard components that could be used to make a system cheaper, smaller, and more reliable.

I’ll give you two examples. One might be a multilayer varistor and the varistor could be used as a transient suppression device, an EMI filter, and also for power-quality improvement for either the sensor or the transceiver. In fact, the sensor and sensor accuracy has led us to develop a very low-leakage-current version of varistors so we could be used to protect sensors to very high levels of transients without affecting their accuracy.

And the other ways or other components that we’ve come out specifically for the communications bus needs or multilayer ceramics that have very predictable and repeatable frequency responses to address the EMI concerns of these fast buses, and we’ve optimized their transient capability. And of course, all of these are AEC-Q200 qualified.

Kent Robinett (Maxim Integrated Products): In terms of the different network standards out there, they’re definitely proliferating, and what you need to look at is what either the Tier 1 or the OEM is trying to solve by application. And, as mentioned before, try to make sure you hit the right performance and cost objective.

For an infotainment system using MOST, that’s a radically different price point and technology capability than some of the system-based chips that have the sensors and LIN on them. They’re radically different technologies and radically different physical layers.

For MOST, you’re trying to take optical and digitize it, audio and video at the same time. And, that’s moving potentially to eMOST and some people are very worried about the serviceability and ruggedability of having the optical network in the car.

It’s very difficult to just take it to a dealer who knows how to repopulate, put together, and reterminate an optical network. You definitely see CAN as being more for the powertrain and engine management systems.

As mentioned earlier LIN is coming along for lot of body and sensor applications. The critical thing there is just as more and more sensors get in the car they need to be very low power and very robust. And FlexRay is coming on strong for a lot of powertrain applications.

And there’s some capability there as it goes from throttle-by-wire into other applications where, as you get more FlexRay nodes in a car, there’s going to be some networking issues with that also because that’s a faster standard that has some EMI issues. But I’m sure the AVX group probably knows more about that than I do.

Electronic Products: How is the drive-by-wire initiative progressing from the component manufacturers’ standpoint and what are you doing to either promote, keep up or push this capability in automobiles and what are you being asked to do?

Kent Robinett: The X-by-wire initiative is progressing. It really depends on the application.

Throttle-by-wire has been going on for awhile. Brake-by-wire is definitely coming. Steer-by-wire is still probably a ways off, and so there’s a couple of Tier 1s that are really driving these applications and these efforts, and moving them toward the OEM.

Initially, it’s going to be an OEM decision because this is just a huge architecture decision that needs to be made within. So we’re getting RFQs, we’re responding to them, and basically right now, we’re waiting for OEMs to say yes. And then once the Tier 1 gets a committed volume, then we can proceed for.

Ron Demcko: Drive-by-wire is a big opportunity for us. There are a variety of high reliability components that we are coming out with and have auto-qualified that specifically address high vibration, high board flexure and high-temperature cycling environments. There’s also redundant circuitry that might be occurring out there, whether it’s the throttle application or not, so we have come up redundant passive components arrays that could be used in these symmetrical circuits and things like that. The reliability on those is orders of magnitude better then even the normal automotive qual parts. For the hybrid electric vehicles we do have a series of power films because in some of the drive-by-wire applications, electric power itself might come in short supply.

Paul Leonard: If you look at power steering and steering itself, it’s not drive-by-wire but it’s what we call electronic power steering, which is replacing the hydraulics with electronics. Fifty percent of the vehicles in Europe have it. We’re getting more and more opportunities for the bigger automobiles here in the States as well. And it also drives the demand for much of the other electronics for hybrid vehicles.

Jim Gillberg: My feeling about drive-by-wire is it could be done today. More and more of the systems that used to be mechanical are obviously all turning electrical,

We’re doing more and more with braking systems. I think it’s almost a philosophical issue. It’s fine for the jet pilots to be up there using drive-by-wire, certainly your car could be drive-by-wire, but I’m not sure the car manufacturers are ready for that yet. I think it’s as much of a selling job to the public and the consumer.

The electronics—in terms of the power systems, in terms of the communications, and in terms of reliability—are all there. It could be built. It’s just not quite time yet.

Mike Wills: I agree, it’s probably a paradigm shift, not only with the OEMs but also with the public at large to get people at a comfort level of going to something where they don’t physically have control over their steering wheel or tires or brakes. As far as reliability, the sensing technologies and electronics are basically there, and probably have been for a little while now. But when braking and steering are concerned, people still like to think, at the end of the day, they have a physical connection and control over the vehicle.

Maybe the bigger concern has been interconnects—from the attachment of the sensing technology within the sensors to rest of the system—which always seems to be the sticking point with the automotive world as far as reliability. This is not to imply an issue with connectors, as that industry creates very robust products. Rather it is a total system issue through the full serviced life of a vehicle. Based on my experience, it seems like the sensing technology and wiring, everything else does fine. It’s with these system interconnects that you usually end up with your issues.

Alan Manara: We make sensors to that go into the electric power steering systems, both contacting and non-contacting types. The first thing users ask is: “What happens when the power goes out?” I have to explain that there is still a physical link that will allow them steer the car.

Kent’s comment is true. A complete change in architecture is required, especially when you talk about drive-by-wire or even electric power steering as they apply to larger-size vehicles where the power needed to steer the vehicle can no longer be provided by a 12-V system. The power scheme in the vehicles needs to be upgraded. That coupled with safety and redundancy, make those systems cost more than a simple wire that moves up a lever. These cost and safety requirements need to be balanced by providing smaller footprints that requires less supporting systems. In the case of the electric steering systems there’s no hydraulic system next to it, there is no pump next to it, they tend to be more compact. So they’re easier to package at the car level.

And then there is the added advantage of being programmable before assembly, during assembly, or even during the life of the vehicle—adapting to driving needs and so on. As the curve of cost vs safety goes down, the curve of reliability vs footprint-flexibility goes up, and vehicles become more and more compact, there will a crossover point when the new bus gains take over and these systems will get implemented. But we’re not there yet.

Dirk Keck: In my opinion, the term X-by-wire is a dangerous term because it’s the suggests that this is one big topic that can be answered in one way or in the other way. And actually, you have to differentiate it very much.

And I would say the two key factors that drive the whole thing: the risk of architectural change, and we have seen this in the 42-V movement. The fact that this needs to change the whole electrical network in the car including all the control devices, finally ended up at a point where noone wanted to make this big leap and there was more or less, until now, no car manufacturer taking this big risk.

And I think if you look at things like steer-by-wire and so on this kind of change would even go further, and you would even have to change the physical architecture or physical layout of the car. And that’s always the question how big this risk is compared to the cost savings you’re creating with this or the performance.

And, here we are at the second point. If we then look into the car in more detail, we see in many spots a lot of X-by-wire technology introduced. If, for example, you look at the water pump, you see the first electrical water pump coming up because you clearly have a performance advantage there, and also a cost advantage: be it in the immediate cost of manufacturing or be it in the cost of ownership.

So, I think all this is being introduced gradually. Not [all at once] as X-by-wire. but on a per instance basis wherever it is advisable from a cost/performance/risk view.

Electronic Products: If you know you’re going to add steer-by-wire this year and next year add another function, when do you prepare for the ultimate necessity of 42 V, if that is a necessity?

Dirk Keck: This is a very difficult question to answer. And I see, right now, especially in the semiconductor and ASIC side of this game, a big tendency to make the existing devices more power efficient to control the batteries and power suppllies much, much better—just to squeeze the last out of the existing technology in terms of performance.

This kind of resembles CMOS a little bit in the 1980’s, where we always said clock frequencies up to a certain level are no longer realizable in CMOS. So, I think there is still some headroom for optimization and to have local power buffers like supercaps and so on.

Martin Mason: From the FPGA perspective, I think it’s an interesting topic. FPGAs are starting to find themselves into some of these powertrain and other mission-critical-type applications.

However, the big issue with FPGA technology is actually a safety one. Does the FPGA maintain its configuration data once the part has been programmed? And SRAM-based technology, as I’m sure many people are aware, has this little-known issue of having single-event upsets take place. And I think that is considered a real Achilles’ heel for the adoption of programmable logic in many of these powertrain applications. Actel, with Flash—an antifuse-based technology—does not suffer from this problem and we have seen design into things like electronic power steering, and engine control modules, antilock brakes, and other safety systems just because we don’t have this safety concern.

Adoption of this is also an emotional decision by the end-consumer. I think driver-assist is probably a better term for the marketing people to use than drive-by-wire. And I think at the end of the day it will come down to cost and safety.

We talked about what we can do to some of the 777 airplanes today. But when you look at the cost putting the electronics in a 777 airplane, they are non-trivial. And until we can get the avionic electronic costs down at the same sort of level and mass production of the automobile, there’s always going to be a select tradeoff of select applications where the cost allows electronics to be used as opposed to electromechanical systems that have been used to start a plane. So, I think it really is a cost-safety-reliability kind of tradeoff that’s going to really determine when this takes place.

Peter Riendeau: Throttle-by-wire, as has been stated by a few others, has been in place for a long time, and I think most people may or may not realize that there’s probably not a production car being made today, late model anyway, that doesn’t have a drive-by-wire throttle. I’m pretty convinced it’s 100% implementation. And that is a good sort of precursor for some of the other electronic systems or electrical conversions, where you see the initial demand for a point-to-point wired system using multiple redundant sensing components and signal and powerpaths to avoid what Mike Wills said—the interconnect reliability issue. But the next generations of those kinds of systems resolve to ICs that were redundant in and of themselves. So to take the system-in-a-package approach, you had the two chips inside of a single package to keep the cost down, so you’re only placing the one component but you’re still getting all the FMEA advantages of redundancy by having two separate chips with two separate power paths and signal paths.

But that moves on and on and we see the compression of taking, for instance, the throttle body side or the injector side and combining the motor into a sensor actuator. Instead of having a separate throttle sensor, position sensor and a separate actuator, you combine them into one unit. I know I’ve read one report that stated there was a 1% fuel economy improvement by going to throttle-by-wire. So you can also see that the efficiency, just the vehicle efficiency, will be impacted because the software itself can intervene over the mechanical inputs the driver might otherwise put on the system. And then, you can say, well we’re going to only ramp up the throttle at this rate. No matter how hard you press on the throttle, it’s only going to go this much faster over this much time. And save fuel and so on. But then the same is true for the drive-by-wire.

And with the safety aspects, I agree: it’s going to take some getting used to by people. The numbers are there when you do the analysis. The numbers that say the reliability can be there, and, in fact can be better than mechanical systems. But and to echo Mike Wills’ comment, it is the interconnects. You can do everything you want at the chip level, the wiring, and on the controllers, but if you get corrosion or you get rodents in there chewing up the wiring, it does make you look to all the redundancy and the safety systems.

Electronic Products: How are component manufacturers being affected by convergence in the vehicle?

Ron Demcko: One of the things that we’re finding is there’s an opportunity for block filters to be used in between all of these modules and interconnecting systems. So, in some cases, the old solution might be up to five other discrete components, and what we found in our lab with studies with some of the auto manufacturers is that you could potentially reduce five parts in a filter to a single component, get a reliability improvement of a couple orders of magnitude, weight savings, size savings, and also get quite a bit more improvement on overall performance. Another thing that we have accepted is that automotive voltages will go both higher and lower as systems get more complex.

To address the lower voltages, we came up with new types of capacitors themselves. An example would be AVXs Niobium Oxide device. This is a failsafe component that is specifically tailored to 12 V and below. Its sweet spot is probably in the 5v area – for instance the output of the regulators on modules. High voltages are being addressed by developments in high voltage MLCCs, high voltage films and stacked ceramics.

Kent Robinett: With all this convergence in telematic systems and infotainment systems, it’s a big challenge for the Tier 1 to go through. Probably the biggest challenge is just what was mentioned: the EMI issues. As you start putting a NAV system with a GPS close to a DVD drive that’s got potentially a bunch of different video and audio systems playing the EMI gets pretty tricky in there.

A normal linear regulator cannot run these complex navigations, where you have to go to a switching power supply. And if that switching power supply gets pretty close to the GPS, GPS receivers are very sensitive and that switching frequency can just obliterate your GPS if you’re not careful. As these things get more complex and they get more rails and you get more switching power supplies, all these EMI issues start to play heavily in terms of how the video looks and the performance of the system.

Peter Cornelius (Marketing Director, Automotive Products, Maxim): There’s also an expectation from the customer that the home theater experience is going to be transported into the car, which causes a lot of trouble for the automobile makers. It’s good business for us. But, the customer expectation is has risen so that the latest iPod or Gameboy does work with the new car they are going to consider.

So, carmakers have been notoriously slow in the adoption rate and they’re feeling a lot of pressure. There’s a lot of differentiation also in the low-end and mid-end car. A Ford Focus without an iPod USB: I don’t think it’s going to sell next model year. And we see a trend to go digital as soon as possible and stay that way from the microphone in, or analog or video source, all the way through the DSP, the gate array of the microcontroller which comes out as I2C straight into Class D, or what we also offer—the LVDS to the glass. That’s a big challenge.

Peter Riendeau: One of the comments I would make is there’s the idea of sensor fusion throughout these systems—in particular infotainment systems more on the order of navigation as opposed to pure entertainment— are trying to use already existing sensor inputs, speed sensors, gyros, accelerometers, and so on to add functionality. You really see that the architecture people in the vehicles are trying to get to a point where they can use some of what we talked about before, about the network capability to lower the cost of any one system by taking advantage of existing sensors that are out there, maybe in other systems, and try to get some of that information traded across these busses. But nobody who’s doing an airbag control system necessarily wants to have the navigation system tapped in and create some conflict, or crosstalk, or EMI that might compromise the integrity of that really truly safety critical system. But it’s there, and they’d certainly see the OEMs and the Tier 1s trying to realize that they’re development teams can get more cooperation, so they can take advantage of the information available through these other systems.

Someone mentioned the backup cameras, and it being just a straight standard video cable. And that’s probably true today because it’s really just a case of “let’s see what’s behind me in my giant SUV that’s has blind spots that I can’t deal with…” So you put in a backup camera. But I think when you start seeing cameras being used and imaging sensors being used for occupant detection as part of crash systems or as lane-tracking systems or object-avoidance systems, or automatic cruise-control systems, there, that kind of sensor data is going to require more of these infotainment-level buses and going to try to tap in to the same display screen that might be used for the navigation system, for instance, or for a display for the radio. And then it’s going to be much more critical to have the interaction in the different groups who are delivering those systems, like an automatic cruise control group versus somebody who’s only working on a system for infotainment. They’re going to have to be able to plan the architecture together and be sure that it’s compatible.

Martin Mason: Ultimately, what designers are looking for is flexibility in the development and deployment of these types of systems. I don’t think a lot of it has been defined.

I think there is a battlefield going on, if you like, with the automotive suppliers to try and meet the demands of the consumer. And you’ve got this sort of trend as consumerization is taking place within the automobile, but without compromising things like quality and cost of the products.

That lends itself extremely well to FPGA-type products, where we can do high-volume business with the automotive suppliers, provide them with longevity of products and provide them the quality devices, but at the same time allow them to customize these solutions by model, even within models, and give customers a great deal of flexibility in what they can end up offering them.

I get a lot of requests for FPGA products from very frustrated designers of infotainment systems saying that they are out there looking for ASFP chips. And by the time they’ve designed them in, they’ve been end-of-lifed. With the automotive products’ cycle admittedly getting shorter but still on two to three years, they’re looking for longevity of part availability as a very critical item for them.

And, yet, the consumer wants to plug in their latest iPod, wants to plug a SIM card, or an SD card with music within the automobile, and they need to move at a very rapid pace of speed here. So we’re seeing the FPGAs being used very, very heavily as logic integrators within infotainment type applications within the automobile space.

Dirk Keck: As a component and sensor manufacturer, we get impacted only indirectly with convergence. I also agree with the first talk around this topic. Our deep concerns are EMI, electromagnetic compatibility, and this becomes more and more of a requirement on the component level and becomes a very important, integral part of the whole qualification structure.

Alan Manara: We don’t supply to entertainment systems. But even in our sensor world, we do see a need for combination sensors or sensors fused into one unit that measure more than one thing.

To give you an example, a steering sensor, in general has to sense both torque and position in the steering wheel. That information is being fed to control systems (processors, controllers) that in turn control actuators. By virtue of having all these sensor readings available from the car sub-systems, new systems can be created that use inputs from all those nodes. So these are synergistic systems that take advantage of all those inputs and try to do something extra. For example, you have occupant detection, and electronic stability systems, crash systems, etc. The step is to fuse these independent systems into a safety and driveability super-system. And that’s where you’ll need these common interfaces—whether it’s CAN, LIN or whatever it is—in a common highway that you can tap into, then all these synergistic systems that I was referring to in the first place will emerge.

Another big things we see in the automotive industry is platforms—whether it’s from Ford or GM or whoever—they have now common platforms. And the idea is to have common platforms where with a change of skin (body, ligths, etc) and different software parameters it can become a crossover vehicle or a Sedan or an SUV from the same basic chassis and electronic systems and so on.

And that ties back to the interfaces again, but also to the programmability and easier to package concept because it’s smaller, etc. All these conversions are taking place right now. We see it, and depending of whom you talk to is a bit different. But at the end of the day, all these systems and sensor outputs are being integrated and being asked to do more.

Mike Wills: I concur with everybody talking about the conversions of the different types of inputs going into a system and being multiplexed for different purposes. The thing that struck me with this question right off the bat—from a standalone sensor standpoint—is with a non-contacting sensor and the use of active electronics onboard to process signals is not only the received but also the emitted EMI or RFI.

Along with that goes what we talked about earlier: power consumption. Because of all these other systems being plugged into the vehicle now, that power budget is becoming much more tight, and that is always one of the big concerns. As we’re designing sensors for a particular subsystem, what that power budget boils down to and how much of that we are going to be allotted is being squeezed tighter and tighter.

Paul Leonard: When we review the integration of these applications, the effect on us is really indirect,I think we all said that earlier. Obviously, we see more active loads inside the body because of this, and that’s always good news for us. The other thing is indirectly, especially on our integrated products, we’re asked to make sure we don’t interfere with these other systems through EMI or any spurious signals, so it’s more of a defensive tactic we’re seeing. But it’s mainly the increased load.

Jim Gillberg: We are affected dramatically by the explosion of these applications, telematics and infotainment, and the fact that 15 to 20 years ago, the real hot debate was were you going to use a 60-V device or a 55-V device. Today, we’re supplying parts that go from 20 to 200 V so the requirements for the power offerings to all these various systems coming in the car are just expanding.

The other problem that exists was mentioned by someone about people wanting their home theater in the car. The reality is people want everything in their car. Any luxury you have in your house you want in your car, and what’s happening is we’re getting more features and functions that typically were not in a car a while ago being designed in, and those designers are designing with products that historically have not been built or qualified for automotive requirements.

We see a lot of requests, or somebody selects a part that may not have been qualified to one of the AEC’s standards that we’re constantly needing to evaluate product reliability qualifications and basically educate our customer.

Electronic Products: What do you see as the most important issues or developments coming along in automotive electronics?

Martin Mason: From a macro level, I think it’s the consumerization of automobiles. Everybody wants to have the latest model or capability, they want to have it today, they don’t want to pay a lot of money for it, and they want it to be more reliable than the last car that they had.

Looking down at a lower-level perspective, there is a significant change toward programmable logic and programmability in general in automobiles and it is driven a little bit by that consumerization request. Time-to-market constraints are increasing and I think the cost of programmable logic has come down to the point that it is a real viable option in many of these cars going forward.

I think there’s a couple of other kind of megatrends. The greening of the car, making the cost of ownership lower for the vehicle, is a very important kind of overall trend, and just the general idea of trying to make the electronics run cooler is essential both from a reliability perspective and also from that kind of green environmentalist. And I think that there’s a move or a trend there towards doing that just so long as it doesn’t cost a cent more than not doing it.

We’re being pushed to do more and achieve more with our devices at the same prices as the year before or the year before that. But programmable logic is certainly getting a foothold within the electronic space and that is great for the programmable logic suppliers.

Peter Riendeau: Networking is probably one of the strongest trends right now in automotive electronics, be it networking at the sensor-data level, at the modular level, at the chassis-controller/engine controller/transmission-controller level, and even in the entertainment systems, that whole interconnection, intercommunication is really driving a lot of the electronics architecture and component development activities as well. And what Martin was speaking about—consumerization and the greening of the car—those things are definitely driving forces and people want to be able to connect up their entertainment systems or their players or their media, their cellphones, or their hands-free Bluetooth connection active as soon as they sit down in the car. And all of that has to be tempered against the recent experiences of some vehicle manufacturers who really were driving the envelope on electronic implementation and ended up suffering reliability problems, interface issues.

The iDrive experience is a good case study of an interesting technology that came maybe too soon or maybe the consumers weren’t ready for it—but it really created a backlash. Something that was meant to actually simplify and improve ended up being something that, especially on the blogs, is still being criticized by a lot of people. But, in fact, if you really read into it most people who use it say, yes, the learning curve is tough, but once you’re through it, it’s great. But that’s going to come more and more as we have all these different systems in the car. And you get in the vehicle and you have to interact with all that electronics. Especially the navigation systems kinds of things, the entertainment systems, you know, being able to preset your radio buttons and still find your way to your destination. If that distracts you from driving, it’s a big problem. So the electronics is definitely going to continue on the trends we’ve seen and there’s going to be a number of different drivers for it, but probably networking and probably the consumers demand will be the big things.

Kent Robinett: In terms of looking into the future, the most important development is probably the complexity and intelligence that OEMs are trying to put into the car. If you’re trying to have an automatic parking system put into your car, there’s a significant amount of electronics and a significant amount of intelligence that needs to be added to the car. That’s a huge opportunity for the electronics industry.

And it’s not just driver assistance: powertrain is getting much more complex and transmissions are going from four gears to eight gears and need more accuracy capability. And, as engines get more complex, you start having mild hybrids or full hybrids, and now there are battery packs in cars, there are battery management issues and a bunch of other things that lead well into a lot of the power supply areas.

Peter Cornelius: I see the mild hybrid, hybrid, and maybe fuel-cell cars taking shape on the horizon and we need to be prepared for that as well. I think we’re getting a good run for the money looking at Prius in terms of how complex it is with air conditioning on 400 V and so forth.

But, coming back to reality, customer expectation is that the next model car costs the same or less. For a car that had five speeds and now has seven, customers are not going to pay much more for it. It seems to be the better mouse trap, but cost is squeezing us as tier two.

Ron Demcko: I think we’re going to see much more green vehicles. There’s going to be a lot more complex with networks and certainly more reliable. So we have four areas of development that we’re working on to address that. One is (EMI). We’ve got the large programs on low cost (EMI) filters. It’s kind of interesting. We can show that with these filters you can even have faster settle time on GPS systems. Two is power quality. We are working on high efficiency decoupling capacitors, as well self-healing capacitors for lower voltages.

Three is a large signal effort. Initially, you might think large signal is high voltage IGBT snubbers only. And certainly we have that. But recently AVX has expanded efforts to further introduction of high voltage power film capacitors as well as high voltage stacked ceramics, high powered stacked ceramics and power MOVs.

The fourth effort is harsh environment work. Currently AVX offers 150c (and higher) ceramics and 175c Tantalums. We are working to extend these offerings to higher temperatures with tighter performance standards and higher reliability. I can predict temperature capabilities in the 250c to 300c range in the future.

One other effort worth noting – a low pressure not hygroscopic encapsulant. This will be needed as modules get put into very difficult environments in the car.

Jim Gillberg: I see power meaning major changes to electronics in two areas where. One is in the existing vehicle: there was a lot said about people trying to milk as much as they can out of the existing 12-V battery system. I think it was probably about eight or nine years ago, we went and developed a nice family of 75-V MOSFETs. We were rapidly awaiting the 42-V system that never came. And I think that’s going to continue.

There’s just an enormous push for us to get the lowest possible impedance switches so there is no power loss in the system. Some of our switches that are in power steering for example, probably have more losses in the wiring and the interconnect than there is in the actual MOSFET.

We’ve had customers come to us looking to invest significant dollars in systems that might give them just a 5% improvement in the alternator for generating power. They certainly are wedded to the 12-V system and it’s going to be a big change to jump from that so there’s a lot of effort going into trying to maintain at 12 V in terms of to reducinge the dissipation, getting the car to use less, and at the same time trying to get more out of the alternator.

The other side of power is kind of the obvious one: where is the power in the vehicle coming from. Is it a hybrid? Is it a diesel? we see a lot of interest especially in Europe. Europe is heavily diesel, much less hybrid, and the performance of some of those products is pretty impressive.

So, I’m not sure yet what’s going to be the winner. Is it going to be hybrid? Is it going to be a hydrogen vehicle? Is it going to be a fuel cell? Is it going to be diesel? There are a lot of different systems being developed and they all come along with different electronics and different consequences. Somebody predicted that if all the cars went hybrid, we’d need about another 20 fabs just to make the IGBTs for the vehicles. So there are certainly a lot of challenges in the area of power, whether it’s in the existing car or the car of the future.

Paul Leonard: When we look at our markets, whether it is a hybrid or alternate electric vehicles, we just see explosive growth in the higher-power applications. Even a modest penetration of hybrid vehicles gives us this growth for high-voltage and high-power products.

The other area we continue to see is the pressure on cost. And through innovations of increased power density, we’re able to more than meet that challenge. But one thing the industry could move towards is more standardization. We have standardization in software, we have standardization in quality standards, but then when it comes down to the actual hardware itself, it’s still pretty unique at our level by the customer. You compare that to other markets like the PC market, which has standardization down to the component level , you can see there’s a long way to go here. And that it could happen in the future.

Mike Wills: Certainly with hybrids, fuels cells, and diesels, what we’re seeing a lot of is applications where sensors are getting right on the engine or even right on or near turbo chargers, etc. So, higher temperatures, increased accuracies, higher speed outputs from the sensor side has really been a tremendous push in development for us. So, instead of 135° to 150°C, we’re even going up as high as 180°C.

And it may be a little bit divergent, but LEDs are being used for everything from customization of the cars and personalization of the cars [aftermarket] all the way through to the lighting on the exterior and the front and rear lighting of the car. I think you’re going to see a whole lot more of that for power savings and just for the aesthetics.

Alan Manara: Remember that vehicles are now built on common platforms. But at the same time everybody wants to drive a different car from the guy driving next to him, so there is a strong push for what is called “mass individualization”.

Customizability is therefore the key. You can see the automotive industry churning new models faster and faster. New models come out every three years or even two! Automotive companies just can’t create a new platform for every model or a new platform so often, so having a reliable flexible and common platforms is extremely important. Ultimately a common flexible platform allows the car industry not only to update the model offerings but to run a mix of vehicles in the same plant. They can just program new parameters change the skin and a new model will be coming down the line. So the key for us is to be more adaptable, to supply solutions that are more modular and faster. The requisite is that they should be useful today and in the future. For several reasons, the investment in tooling, manufacturing facilities, and so on is pretty high for you to be changing them every three or four years. So they want that programmability and ability to continue to use those devices going into the future. So for example, being able to supply a steering sensor that can work in the cabin or next to the engine is key. The customer can confidently use the same device in either application. We are beginning to see that type of requests..

Dirk Keck: I agree with the comments of Mike from Optek, who said we are seeing a tendency to operate the electronics, and especially sensors, in places where you would not have operated electronics in the earlier days. So we have exposure to harsh environments, to corrosive substances, and very extreme environmental conditions like, for example, in the wheel itself, or at the tire-pressure-monitoring system.

And, where I disagree a little bit from some of my predecessors is, we have quality standards in place but these quality standards are still addressing the conventional ways to operate electronics, and if you’re looking at these new requirements with the exposition to the extreme conditions, most quality standards do not hold any longer. It’s very challenging to develop methods to qualify parts that have to withstand this kind of environmental conditions.

Electronic Products: With whom in the manufacturing chain is the component manufacturer dealing? Is it an engineer at the automotive manufacturer or an EE who’s designing a circuit that will go into the vehicle, or both?

Mike Wills: Actually, quite a bit of both. We typically are a Tier 2 or Tier 3 supplier, so very often we are interfacing with both Tier 1 and OEM’s. But for a lot of the specifications we do end up dealing quite a lot with the OEMs.

The communication standards will often be dictated by the OEMs. So we accommodate that package and we’re all held to that at the end of the day.

Peter Riendeau: We worked pretty closely early on with the General Motors for example because they define their own single-wire CAN standard called the GM LAN standard. And, that became a question of the component manufacturers really having to work from the bottom into the food chain to the top skipping the whole middle because of the development time for GM to establish the standard, and get it worked out, and get the prototype silicon that proved it could work, and then back-fit it through their supply chain. So it’s a bit of a complicated web. It’s difficult because you need that standardization but it’s sometimes almost a vertical-integration model with sub-suppliers playing the part of the vertical suppliers.

Paul Leonard: Today, we sell to first tier suppliers and we establish product definitions with them. We work on architecture design mainly with the end-automotive customer themselves. So, for instance, if it’s a power application, we may work with Chrysler, on a particular transmission application, realizing it may come to a Continental or Siemens in the end.

Martin Mason: The FPGA is a relatively new technology being adopted. The automobile or car manufacturers are very interested in the component selection process. We find ourselves having to evangelize, if you’d like, the use of programmable logic not only to the subsystem manufacturers—the big tier one automotive parts component manufacturers—but also to the automobile companies themselves.

They are not going to endorse a new technology being put into their subsystems or cars without really understanding it and so we find ourselves actually having to educate up and down the supply chain as we go in to this engagement process. And it’s interesting to see where the final decision lies. It is actually often with the end consumer as to which of these is being used, although the reliability and the onus of making a quality product relies with the component manufacturer. So it’s an interesting kind of three-way dance that we do as we go through the component’s engineering, the design-in, the quality specs, and the reliability of the products.

When you’ve got a great product with high reliability it really is a very easy sell up and down the chain and we’ve not really come across any major issues. But it is a very time-consuming and involved process to convince everybody to get consensus on new technologies in what is a relatively conservative marketplace in many respect.

Dirk Keck: If you’re looking at custom specific or a customized project, the most fruitful projects are usually when all parties come together on one table: where the OEM is involved, the tier one, as well as the components manufacturer when we are talking about a customized component. That really brings in the possibility and the ability to mitigate all the different aspects there and to come to an optimal solution.

And if I look at the projects I have seen in the past, there are more or less two types: the triangular relationship with the OEM as well as the classical model with a tier one driving the project. And really, the success was higher on the triangular kind of relationship although it is more complicated to communicate.

We have seen in the past the tendency of the OEM to put more responsibility towards the tier one and get less involved in the component side. But right now, I think there are already the first signs that this is going back into the other direction and I have the feeling at least personally that the OEM will start to regain more control over the components that are going to be used.

Ron Demcko: Usually, we’ll work with Tier 1 too and chipset personnel in developing the parts and then they become standards and receive very wide usage. A lot of times we’ll have engineer for the week or for a few days where we actually send an engineer to a large design house and they sit down with the test bench and try to help some of the young engineers that that company try to cost reduce, or define or optimize it. Sometimes we have design reviews where they actually have us in and look at how do cost reduce an existing design.

The other one that works well is we have an EMC Web and the bench is always open for anyone to send us a module to look at it. And we look at how to optimize this performance.

Peter Riendeau: I think it’s no surprise to say this is a conservative industry. There’s a very small pool of suppliers, especially in automotive electronics—both from the component to the tier one and twos.

Because of that, you see a lot of partnerships where you really establish a working relationship with your customers and with their customers, because when things do have an issue, and of course we can all attest we do have issues—with products in the field, with products in manufacturing occasionally—you really see how quickly the string is connected and you’re on the phone, you’re in conference calls, you’re in labs, and your troubleshooting issues, but you’re doing it mutually. And it’s not a blame game as much as it is a [case of] let’s solve this problem, let’s figure out how to make it and never happen again, and that’s I think why the electronic reliability in cars continues to improve at a really rapid rate.

But it also speaks to that sense of a relationship of mutual support even though when it goes to pricing it become adversarial. But it’s certainly on the engineering side and certainly on the manufacturing and operation side, the trend is to have that very tight relationship.

Alan Manara: We are having more contact with the actual car manufacturers. The reason they’re out there is to gather information understanding technologies in order to formulate a technology strategy.

In order to ensure future use, scalability, pricing, etc. That way they will be capable to turn around and demand or even impose their suppliers to use specific technologies. This can be a good thing or a bad thing for us. It could be a good thing because it allows us to enter places that we couldn’t enter before if we have a good technology or something to offer. But it could be bad because the competition is more open, faster and if you do not have the correct technology the door may not open again. So networks and relationships are critical more cooperation at the engineering and operations level can make or break a deal. Because right now, the things are happening so fast that we have to be able to turn around and call someone at, let’s say Melexis, and understand, not only what their technology is all about, but also logistics, roadmap, capabilities, etc.

Kent Robinett: As the OEMs start setting more architecture direction you need to be talking to them to make sure that your product specifications are correct and that you still need to work with the tier ones for the actual module implementation.